Giving Back

Giving Back

The Very First Key

This story begins with a New York hotel room key. Actress and singer/songwriter, Caitlin Crosby, started wearing the hotel key as a necklace while on tour and had the idea to start engraving old, used keys with inspirational words. Realizing that, in a way, we are all like these keys – unique, flawed, scarred, and sometimes discarded by others – she wanted these keys to have their purpose renewed over and over again.

At FASHIONABLE, we believe our role is to INVEST IN A WOMAN. When a woman is empowered with work to do, whether in the home or in an office, she not only experiences the joy and satisfaction of developing a skill, she also creates change in those around her. FASHIONABLE’s role in this story is working with women, both locally and globally, who have overcome challenges ranging from prostitution to addiction to a lack of opportunity. Every one of us understands what it means to overcome, and we are all ABLE to find purpose in the work we do. Thank you for joining us.

The Akola Project (which means to work in the local dialect), is a social business within a non-profit framework to improve the physical and spiritual livelihoods of marginalized women, their families and communities. Akola’s model provides training for marginalized women so they can make products designed to sell in U.S. markets. Akola sells the products in the U.S. and returns the money to the women so they can generate a monthly income. The women use the income from Akola Project to send their children to school, provide medical care, and to start other local small businesses.

*Local Artist*

Sojourn means “to stay for a time in a place; live temporarily”. At the time, I had really been struck by how short are our lives on this earth. As a believer in Christ, life here is just a sojourn, a brief adventure, before we reach our true home in Heaven. With that in mind, I really wanted to make the most of every moment I was given and to live my sojourn for more than just myself and to use my talents and passions to help those in need. Because of that, I started donating 20% of all profits to mission focused charity organizations that are making a tremendous impact in the lives of others.

Liberty’s involvement in Rwanda began in March 2011 when students from the counseling and psychology departments trained teachers and pastors to serve as lay counselors. Later that year, Liberty students returned, counseling both victims and perpetrators of the genocide. Mrs. Becki Falwell was moved by what the students were doing in Rwanda and became personally involved in helping launch the Restore Rwanda fundraising campaign.

The team brought back 500 bags made by Rwandans in a vocational school. The students from the school were either prostitutes or orphans that were taken off the streets and placed there to learn a trade and receive an income. The Liberty University Bookstore purchased the bags and is selling them, sending proceeds back to the vocational school.

Liberty will send a missions team from Light Ministries to Rwanda in March and will host an academic study tour through LU Abroad in November.

Liberty students contributed most of the $24,000 raised to build a preschool last summer, enabling many children in the area to attend school for the first time.